nd almost improper thought to
occur to the officer of the watch of a ship on the high seas on no
matter how quiet a night. Why on earth was he bothering his head? Why
couldn't he dismiss all these people from his mind? It was as if the
mate had infected him with his own diseased devotion. He would not have
believed it possible that he should be so foolish. But he was--clearly.
He was foolish in a way totally unforeseen by himself. Pushing this
self-analysis further, he reflected that the springs of his conduct were
just as obscure.

"I may be catching myself any time doing things of which I have no
conception," he thought. And as he was passing near the mizzen-mast he
perceived a coil of rope left lying on the deck by the oversight of the
sweepers. By an impulse which had nothing mysterious in it, he stooped
as he went by with the intention of picking it up and hanging it up on
its proper pin. This movement brought his head down to the level of the
glazed end of the after skylight--the lighted skylight of the most
private part of the saloon, consecrated to the exclusiveness of Captain
Anthony's married life; the part, let me remind you, cut off from the
rest of that forbidden space by a pair of heavy curtains. I mention
these curtains because at this point Mr Powell himself recalled the
existence of that unusual arrangement, to my mind.

He recalled them with simple-minded compunction at that distance of
time. He said: "You understand that directly I stooped to pick up that
coil of running gear--the spanker foot-outhaul, it was--I perceived that
I could see right into that part of the saloon the curtains were meant
to make particularly private. Do you understand me?" he insisted.

I told him that I understood; and he proceeded to call my attention to
the wonderful linking up of small facts, with something of awe left yet,
after all these years, at the precise workmanship of chance, fate,
providence, call it what you will! "For, observe, Marlow," he said,
making at me very round eyes which contrasted funnily with the austere
touch of grey on his temples, "observe, my dear fellow, that everything
depended on the men who cleared up the poop in the evening leaving that
coil of rope on the deck, and on the topsail-tie carrying away in a most
incomprehensible and surprising manner earlier in the day, and the end
of the chain whipping round the coaming and shivering to bits the
coloured glass-pane at the end of